Users of the Gaia project’s open source utility for viewing the data normally available to Google Earth clients have been asked to stop using it in the wake of a cease and desist request from Google.
ZDNet Google blogger Garett Rogers pointed out the Google action, and noted it only took about a week after the project got publicized to draw a response from Google.
Jones cited the dire threat posed to 100 million Google Earth users in his email, which criticized the multiple areas where Gaia’s developer has broken the software’s terms of service and committed other violations:
The kindness through which Google has made the wonder of our planet available to more than 100 million users around the world is now threatened — not by a menacing and fierce business competitor — but by you.
Although tone is generally difficult to determine from email, Jones appears to be trying to come across as a good guy, rather than unleashing a corporate lawyer upon the developer. Since the developer appears to be Russian, this tack may be less of a gentle approach, and more reflective of how it could be difficult to legally affect a Russian programmer who is beyond the gentle caresses of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Jones cited licensing costs as an issue. Google pays for the imagery used in its Earth software, and Jones made an analogy to music labels doing business with Apple because the iPod’s Fairplay DRM scheme doesn’t allow for sharing songs with other hardware.
In its efforts to make the world’s information universally available, Google falls flat here. Crying about licensing costs when you’re toting a $149 billion market cap rings hollow, if your corporate mission doesn’t include making that information available to platforms beyond Windows when it comes to virtually every one of your applications.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
